I invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12. I'm going to read this morning the first nine verses. And please keep them open. We'll be referring back to chapter 12 and 15. This is the word of the Lord. Let's give our attention to his holy word. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran and Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in haran and they set out to go to the land of canaan when they had when they came to the land of canaan abram passed through the land to the place at shechem to the oak of morah at that time the canaanites were in the land and the lord appeared to abram and said to your offspring i will give this land so he built there an altar to the lord who had appeared to him from there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord and Abram journeyed on still going toward the Negev and there is the reading of God's word well typically we're going through acts in the morning and tonight we'll take up that study again in acts but as I was speaking uh a few weeks ago at RYS to your youth and to youth across the United Reformed Churches in U.S. and Canada. I was speaking on Abram, Abraham, and his story, and I thought as I was going through this again, I realized that I had made assumptions about this that I had a good understanding of it. I made assumptions that I properly understood Abraham, and this is one of those kind of Bible text that we come to and say oh we've heard that and we know that i think every time as a pastor i come back to a text that i've looked at before especially with you and and had the privilege of doing it rys i um i realized that's a wrong assumption that we make god's word is so rich and full of wonderful truths to help us that if we take that approach we'll miss the glorious things that are being said to us but often the very realities of a hard life that we're living and the confusions of life cloud the things that we had learned at one time and we have to constantly be reminded of the truths that are before us that's why the study of the life of Abraham is so important you know the new testament calls him the father of the faith we're supposed to take abraham and learn from him we're supposed to study him we're supposed to understand the life of abraham but what particularly does the lord want us to know what is he teaching us in this this glorious life of abraham and i thought as we come to the table this morning this is wonderful uh to consider and to rehearse again with you uh the wonderful truth here for what we see is the lord's ways to abraham we see the lord's goodness to him we see abraham learning about himself we see the the central truth here that god is is calling abraham to trust him to believe the promises it's all about the promises that god makes and i think sometimes we stand back from that and we say oh the promises the promises what are the promises and and why is it so important to live by the promises what does that really do for us we've heard this all our life and the reason we struggle when we say just believe the promises is because that's no easy thing there's nothing easy about that i'm going to tell you this morning to believe maybe uh the lord and his providence brought unbelievers in here who really have not yet believed. I'm going to tell all of you this morning in this sermon to believe in an unseen God who's made all these wonderful promises to you of nothing that, at least in terms of the future promises of glory, you have any eye to see. You've never seen the glory. I'm going to tell you to live by these promises when in life, actually, the experiences of life seem to militate against the promises of God, seem to challenge the promises of God, seem to call into question whether God even really exists. And this is why studying the life of Abraham is so important. He being called Abraham our forefather, what did he learn according to the faith? He teaches us everything about our struggle to live by the promises of God. And yet, even when, through it all, he is in the middle of doubt, in the middle of distress, and often in the middle of failure, God will not let him go. And that's what's so beautiful about this. This was given before the law was given on Sinai. 400 years earlier to teach us something about grace. So we'd understand it. Well, that's what we're going to do here briefly this morning. Before he could do that, Abraham had to learn who God was. It's the two great questions of life, the bigger questions of life. You have to answer the questions of who God is and who am I. Everything hinged on this first great promise that God made after the fall. Remember after the fall, the Lord, instead of bringing judgment on his people, he made a promise to his people. He made a promise to his people of a champion. Judgment fell on the wicked, but he made a promise to his people that a champion would come, a savior would come. And what we see as we come to chapter 12 is the Lord zeroing in on one man, calling him out and showing us how that promise would develop, what that promise was, how it would show itself in time for God's people and teaching us so much of how the Lord wants us to live by that promise. And that's where we come in chapter 12 at verse 1 where we read right at the beginning, Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And he says, I will make you a great nation. It's really a remarkable call, isn't it? I want you, Abram, to drop everything. i want you to leave behind everything i want you to leave your land i want you to leave your country and i want you to come to a country that i have for you come to me the remarkable thing about the call i can't get over as i study this again is who is the lord to abraham where do we have any indication that abraham had an intimate knowledge of the lord abraham had a lot more knowledge of the moon god that his dad worshiped tara and here comes this call seemingly out of nowhere which is the real force of the text the impact of the text is god forcefully called him You come. You are to leave your family, notice that, your kindred. You are to leave your home, and you notice there the aspects of the call. You are to come, leave all, and then come. It doesn't make it any easier that Ur was not like living in a place like Hemet or something like that. It was beautiful. It was luxurious. they've dug up all kinds of things and they dug up a queen whose body was wrapped in pure gold this was a one place to live and here this call comes and the lord is calling him to completely separate out to him leave your father leave your mother leave your brothers leave your sisters all of them and you come to me i want a complete separation from your past conditions of course aren't right what conditions are right when you get a call like this leave my dad's place of prosperity wealth a future at least here and go to a place of where what is my future what what is certain about that i i don't i can't at least see dad's prosperity but to go here where is it where am i going where's economic security where is it i want you leaving you come to an unknown god to an unknown land with an unseen future all you can say at this point in genesis chapter 12 is that's madness the whole thing is unreasonable who would do that you begin to think about this and and and if you start to put it in christian categories and you understand the distinctly christian message then you understand this is this is actually very similar to what i've experienced with the lord it's not so far off is it think about your existence under the sun think about it most of you have uh been baptized as probably infants none of you put up your hand at that time and said me right not one of you asked for that now some of them might come along and say well that's part of the problem i should have been able to ask for that but that's not how the bible looks at it the bible looks at it as from the beginning god put a call on your life is that a bad thing or a good thing we read the baptism form when three of our young people stood up and professed faith and it is distinct in there an absolute biblical truth that we are to always teach our children that they have been set apart by who the lord a call was a claim was placed on them and then when we go through and we train our children to believe this you believe this you believe this i don't see god i don't see him where is he where am i going what am i doing what does it mean to come much of this much of the time if we're going to be honest, none of this makes a lot of sense. Where are we going? Right? Are we going? Where's God? Is this it? Is this what I'm supposed to do right here, right now? For many of you, at this point in life, this is all you have right now. Come. Follow. Follow what? Come. Follow. Go to a land that I will show you. Here we are. I found my favorite Calvin quote, probably, on this. Maybe ever. I command you, this is Calvin, to go forth with closed eyes until having renounced your country, you have given yourself wholly to me. Wow. Close your eyes. Come. Give yourself to me. So, I don't get it. Come. Leave my land. leave my country, leave the U.S. Until I've given myself to you, Lord, completely, I don't even know who I am, right? This is the challenge of the text. This is the heart of the text. What makes it worse is that when I read those calls of Jesus earlier, did that seem easy to you? Did any of that make sense to you? Listen to it again. If anyone would come after me, he's God, let him deny himself let him take up his cross and let him follow for whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake right how's about this we'll save it and he goes on now great crowds accompanied him and he turned and said to them if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother wife and children brothers and sisters yes even his own life also he cannot be my disciple whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple that is not the nice jesus that is often preached today is it perplexing and jesus said to another follow me it was obviously perplexing for others because they didn't do it did they he said lord let me first go bury my father jesus said let the dead bury their own dead you go preach huh who does that another said lord i'll follow you but let me first go bid them farewell at my house jesus said no one having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of god what do you do with that here we are. Come. Come. Come. Leave your past and come to me. This is where the Bible sometimes we feel is disconnected from us. I don't know what that means. I don't get it. I still don't get it. I'm 41 with regard to abram i want to encourage you he didn't get it either and he's 75 by the way did you know that now you study the life of abram when did god call him i want you to listen to act 7 just for a minute and see that that that stephen's record of this is a little bit different listen to this then stephen said brothers and fathers hear me the god of glory appeared to our father abram when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran and said to him, go out of your land and from your kindred and go to the land that I will show you. Then he went out from the land out of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. Whoa, that's where we are now, Genesis 12, Haran. And after his dad died, God removed him from there into this land in which you're now living. So put it together. God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans. And what did he do? He takes dad with him. Leave your kindred. Dad comes. And they stop at Aran, another spot of the moon god. And they don't get up until dad dies. Sounds a little bit like Jesus. No, no, no, no, no. Let me first go bury my father. No, you come now. So if you look down at verse 4 of chapter 12, he packs up and goes from Haran. So that is not what God said. This is not Canaan. So the call in chapter 12 is Haran, but because verse 4 tells us that after this call, he leaves from Haran. So he hears the call, he takes dad, he stops. Terah dies. Here's the only conclusion I can draw. Abraham is really struggling with this. he's struggling with following. Here's where we're called, I think, to look at the real truth about life and be honest with us as believers. Survey Abram's life. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start back. I'll show you that in a minute. Most of us have a very difficult time living by faith in the promise. That's why we're here. if you forward here to chapter 15 you see it even stronger in in abram you'll notice there that the lord comes to a very discouraged abraham and he says to him after these things 15 genesis 15 1 the word of the lord came to abram in a vision fear not abram i am your shield and your reward shall be very great but the lord recognized that abraham is living by a lot of fear anxiety he's struggling he seems to have no place in this world god has uprooted him he has no home but it's not just that god god has made promises to him of land and seed of other the two promises of the covenant of grace we call it that the two promises are an inheritance land glory and seed a people that is brought about by a savior a champion here he is he's in a tent god had promised him that his descendants would be as the the sand of the the seashore and the stars of heaven and he still has no son all that abram's known from the call and i'm moving fast here through time uh we're we're looking at an overlap here of years 10 to 15 years he has known nothing but famine hardship trial pain and he's taken nothing for himself yet what is this who am i really following did i go through all this for nothing to live in a tent well this is where i think as we look at the story of abram we see what the bible is teaching us about him being the father of faith you say god has given us the same kind of call follow believe the gospel it's one thing to just intellectually accept it but it's quite another thing to really follow when my experience seems to prove that none of this is true or that i'm going forward with what god said but i still have little identity. I'm not really seeing a lot of success in life, and life is not getting any easier. Our faith comes with some pretty awesome promises, doesn't it? Our faith comes with some radically wonderful promises. Heaven, glory, a Savior, communion with God, and right now it seems to be little like abraham fear is real struggle is real we often feel vulnerable we um we've been following christ for years i don't know how many sermons if you ever counted you've listened to in this church and and really uh you could be here at 75 today and still struggling with, I don't seem to have much to show for it. And then we have the big problem. You know what it is. Sin. We're not doing real well with it like we want to. I know I shouldn't be doing some of the things that I do, right? Paul said. But I do them. How does that prove strength from god am i a believer by chapter 15 i really believe you have a man ready to give up his struggle is real and the spirit has inspired it for you to see but the struggle then being if i can see nothing i see nothing of your promise happening how in the world am i to go forward in other words you've said this but none of it seems to be proven true and and what are his choices at the beginning of chapter 12 i want you to just listen listen to abraham's choices since this whole thing started in three chapters and actually when you cover to chapter by chapter 20 that the man is a thorough mess by all accounts he's a mess he gets to the promised land in chapter 12 and guess what he does because of famine he leaves it and he goes down to egypt dumps off his wife to pharaoh so in one scene he has thrown away the whole abrahamic covenant he threw away land and he threw away seed see it one scene dumps his wife into another man's arms well you know what god did for him right come back to that But by this chapter 15, the Lord makes the covenant of grace. By chapter 16, after he's made all this promise, he goes out and says, forget this. I'm going to do it with another woman to get the seed. No elder would want to deal with that mess. Trust me. He has a difficult time leaving family. He has a difficult time trusting God for deliverance. He's taking everything into his own hands. He's discouraged, at times probably feels faithless, and fights to go back to Egypt. Well, whose story is that? Well, it's Israel, and it's ours. What do we do with Abraham? Well, we try to look at Romans 4 that says he was unwavering in the promises and faith, and clean them up. That's what we try to do. We try to clean the guy up, right, because of that statement. without realizing that Romans 4 says God justifies the wicked and he's talking about Abe. What's the message? Well, how many of you have made a profession of faith? There are three of them today. How many of you have slipped back into sexual immorality? How many of you have lived doubting the promises? How many of you, truth be told, looking at our lives or trying to do it ourselves? How many of you still, if it got to your deathbed, would wonder if you've done enough? God is pretty absent at times from our pursuits in this life, isn't he? We're doing the same thing. In both cases, Genesis 12, Genesis 15, start, stop, start, stop. The text is driving us to ask the question, what does God do? Well, I know what I would do with this guy, right? Church discipline time. Get with the program, man. You're just, knock it off, right? We can analyze people to a T. We got all their disorders we can point out in them, right? What kind of disorders does this guy have? I'm at least calling Abraham a narcissist at this point. What does God do? Get angry? See, Paul looks at this whole phenomenon before the giving of the law and says you should study it because it's teaching you something about the grace of God. We have a lot of great people who can analyze our lives and tell us all the problems. It's really hard to see our own problems. God gives the call. Abram fails. You fail. At this point, everyone gets nervous. Pastors get nervous. Pastor, you keep preaching like this, you're going to create antinomians. We'll see. We'll see. Look at verse 2 of chapter 12. He gets up. He starts, stops. Leave, Abram. Here's what I'm doing. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. What did he do? Oh, he just made seven promises. Count them. Number of perfection. He just starts unloading the promises on the man. I'm going to do this. I'm giving you the land. I'm going to make you a great nation. Land, seed. land, inheritance, Jesus, people. I'm going to bless you. Now look back at chapter 15. One more time. The Lord comes to Abram and says in chapter 15, after he's discouraged, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield and your reward shall be very great. It's an amazing moment. I, Abram, am going to shield you And I think the translation is better said, I am your shield and your reward is very great. I am this for you. I'm putting my presence around you. I'm going with you. I'm going to be with you. I love you. I'm keeping you. Are you confused? Are you discouraged? Is this word hard for you? I'm declaring to you right now, all of your fears are for nothing because I'm with you in the covenant of grace. I will never leave you nor forsake you. That's what Jesus said. I'm your refuge and your strength. You think you've lost something in following me? I've given you me. Let me tell you the truth of the matter. You're really afraid. You're really doubting. I am yours. Another Calvin quote. God offers himself right here to you. And that God is yours in respect of property and enjoyment. You can't say that, can you? Yeah. He's yours. Because people don't understand this. They feel alone. They doubt. And they struggle with trust issues. Of what is being offered. Of who is being offered. It's not just heaven and glory. It's him. But you see, Abraham's still struggling. Look at verse 2 of Genesis 15. But Abram said, Oh Lord God, what will you give me? Huh? You didn't just say that, right? You didn't just ask, what will you give me after he just offered himself to you? Still, it's just not connecting. I am your God and you are my people. Has that really set in? That's the essence of the covenant of grace and the promise. I am your God, you are my people. I am your God, you are my people. Let me just let that run right over our lips and minds. What are you going to give me? I don't have a son. I'll tell you what, Abram. Your name will be great, Genesis 12. Your shem will be great. I've got a son for you. Lord, what if I go around and mess up my life? What if I do stupid things? You're my child, Abram. Do you hear the message? You're my child. Have I not proved it? When did I put a call on your life? For many of you, it was at baptism. Meet your God of all grace. Paul said, I want you to know that God of all grace is God that good to messy people like us. Well then, if I had time today, I'd really unfold chapter 15 where Abraham's still struggling. The Lord takes him on a star tour. Time to get out of your house and look up. See all that? See all the stars? You see? Can you number them? Could you go out, boys and girls, and grab a handful of sand and ever number that? I'm going to do that. How? another promise. And then as night falls, the Lord tells Abram, cut a row of animals, break them open, and spread a row. This is how they made pacts and agreements and covenants in those days. They'd even put a door up. Two parties would walk through to say, I'm going to do what I said. This is what Hebrews is telling you when it says, God does not lie. And He did two immutable things. He made a promise and then He made an oath. That's chapter 15, where Abraham falls asleep and God passes through the pieces alone. And Abraham's in horror. What does he see? He sees God giving his son for him to save him, to love him. He sees Golgotha. God would split open his son to forgive us. What else does he need to do? What conclusions do you draw after this? He wants me to live by the promises, doesn't He? That He'll never leave me nor forsake me and He's given me everything. I want to tell you briefly here before we go to the supper of something that happened this week in my hometown of Lemoore. A former mayor was killed in a car accident. He graduated a few years before me. And he was driving out golfing And on these little valley roads, you know, some guy just barrels through at 100 miles an hour, hits him, and all the people in the car, it's over. His name was Billy. Billy, in the newspaper, was a standing room only at his service yesterday at a hall. And it said under the newspaper title, there was this picture. He said, today is all that you have. That was his great quote, what he left to people. What a tragedy. What a tragedy. That is not how the believer thinks. The unbeliever, Jesus said, thinks like that because they have no perspective on this. Today we eat, we drink, we be merry because tomorrow we die. The believer says, tomorrow we receive everything. And that's what we're living by faith in the promises. This is what the Lord's calling us to. Come. I've got something wonderful for you. When you're drawn by His power and overtaken by His love, and you understand that it's a determination to bless you that He's going to fulfill, the things of this world will then grow strangely dim. But you're going to fight against it your whole life. That's reality. What happened to Abram? Well, in both cases, he gets up. But the New Testament highlights Genesis 15, verse 6 and 7. They say at this moment, something great happened. Abraham, did you see it there? Believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Right then and there, that was the night God justified Abraham. He turned, he believed, he came, and that's what this is all about. This is what you saw this morning with the professions. So that when the New Testament says, against all odds he believed, this is what it's calling us to today, to believe the promises, to trust the promises, to understand the God who has called you, the God of promise, to understand what he is like to us. And when you know Him, then you begin to find an identity for yourself. No matter how many times we stumble along the way, none of it will change His relentless purpose and will to bless us in Christ. You hear that? And Abraham gets up. And Abraham does follow. Grace never creates lawless people. Struggling people will happen, but they get up and they come. Being justified by His grace. The Lord has blessed you. The Lord has loved you. And now you understand the call. Come this day. But don't be like what I did described with my own family. Godless. Reformed people, godless. What happened? This is what the Lord is saying. I am your God. You're my people. So when Jesus says, come to me, you come. That's how powerful his call is. You get up and you come. Wherever he goes, you go. Whatever he calls you to do and to be, you follow. Come to me, says Jesus. Leave behind your former life of sin, darkness, Ignorance, come, for I have decided to bless you. Did you hear it? Those who believe that promise, this is what the table and who the table is for. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your tender mercies to us. We tremble because we know what we are, and we know how we provoke You, and we know what we deserve, but You've not given us as our sins deserve. You've proved it already. So cover us today. Hide us in the cleft of the rock. Show us, Jesus, as we come. Give us believing hearts to partake of this supper. Let us be able to taste and see today what it really means that you are good. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.